Paranoid

by Lisa Jackson

  The man in black didn’t follow.

  Of course.

  She turned a final corner and slowed to a walk, smiling as she saw the familiar neon sign. Tucked between an insurance office and a pizza parlor in an old hotel that had been converted into storefronts was her favorite coffee shop. The lighted sign, a large glowing coffee cup with a wisp of white steam curling over the rim, sat high over the awning and a sign that read: THE DAILY GRIND.

  A beacon to the locals looking for an early morning cup of joe.

  “Be right back,” she said to the dog as she always did when she snapped Reno’s leash to the leg of a bench. She caught the lifted eyebrows and shared glances from a few men who were seated outside and already sipping from their cups.

  Tough.

  It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to stares cast her way or whispered asides. Once, several years earlier, she’d just slid under the awning of the barbershop where she was shepherding Dylan to get his hair trimmed when she’d gotten an earful from two women who had been coming out of a store in the same strip mall.

  “She’s the one . . . remember, I told you about her?”

  Rachel had glanced over her shoulder and found the taller of the women actually pointing at her.

  “Hey!” Rachel had said, but the woman was undeterred. In her midfifties, her expression hard, she had walked to the driver’s side of an ancient and dented station wagon.

  “She killed her brother down at that crappy old cannery, the one just west of town?”

  “Her?” The younger woman, round and squinting behind red glasses, had looked straight at Rachel.

  “Yep. Literally got away with murder, if you ask me. Claimed it was an accident. Other kids who were there, playing some kind of sick game, they backed her up. And her old man, he was a cop at the time. A detective. He’s the one who found her.” Unlocking the car, she had clucked her tongue. “A damned shame.” Her friend had slid inside the interior of the old Chevy, but the driver had remained beside the open door, glaring at Rachel over the sun-bleached roof and silently daring her to start something.

  “How can she live with herself?” her friend had asked and pulled the passenger door shut.

  “Lord knows.”

  “Mom?” Dylan had said, tugging her arm.

  Rather than make a scene in front of her son, Rachel had shepherded him into the shop, where the barber was waiting. But she’d been furious and had watched through the wide window as the car had pulled out of the parking spot and slowly moved down the street. Even now, five or so years later, she felt the back of her neck heat at the memory.

  She hadn’t known either woman.

  Had seen the older one only one other time, driving that same old gold wagon through town.

  But everyone in this small town knew about Rachel. About that night.

  And no one seemed to forget.

  She cleared her throat and pushed the memory aside as she shoved open the screen door and the warm scents of hot coffee and baked goods drifted outside. An espresso machine gurgled and hissed. Near the back of the establishment, four regulars had camped out with iPhones and newspapers scattered over a round table.

  Brit Watkins, one of Rachel’s high school classmates, was working the counter. Tall and slim, she wore her blond hair pulled back into a tight bun. Large gold hoops dangling from her ears, a baby bump visible beneath her apron, she glanced up from filling a cup. “Hey, Rach,” Brit said and slid the cup over to the man in line in front of Rachel, a guy in his seventies with a silvery beard-shadow. He paid for his purchase with exact change, then left another quarter in the tip jar and moved aside to doctor his cup with cream and some kind of sugar substitute.

  “What’ll it be?” Brit asked.

  “How about a sixteen-ounce coffee.”

  “You got it.” Brit’s smile didn’t quite touch her eyes, but then it never had. Not since that night. Maybe not before. Brit was one of the kids who’d been in the factory that night, and like most of the people who’d been at the scene of the tragedy, she was a little reserved around the woman who’d been charged with killing her half brother.

  Rachel nodded. “And a maple bar and chocolate donut with sprinkles.”

  Brit arched an eyebrow.

  “For the kids.” She smiled. “But don’t judge me.”

  “Breakfast of champions,” Brit said, one side of her mouth lifting as she poured the coffee, then bagged the pastries.

  “They’ve had a rough week. No—that’s not really true. Their lives are pure bliss. I’ve had a rough week.”

  Brit actually chuckled. A rarity. “I get it. Teenagers. I’ve got four on the payroll, if you count Mickey, who never seems to show up for his shift. So . . . here ya go.” She handed over a white sack and Rachel’s change.

  Rachel dropped the coins into the open tip jar out of habit. “You’re going to Lila’s tonight, right? For the meeting.”

  “What? Wait. No.” Brit glanced at a calendar hanging over a bookcase laden with ceramic cups. “Oh, darn. Really? Is that tonight?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Shoot! I should never have let Lila rope me into it,” she said, her forehead puckering in consternation. “I guess Pete will have to handle the kids tonight.” She blew out a long sigh. “It’s just I’m so tired, all the time. I get in here before five in the morning five days a week, and with this one”—she tapped her protruding belly—“I’m always tired.” Another sigh as the front door opened and a woman dressed in heels, a slim skirt, and a leather jacket entered.

  “Are you coming?” Rachel asked.

  “Not much choice. I said I’d cater the event and I will. Pete had a fit that I volunteered, but once I’d agreed, I really couldn’t back out. It was last year and now”—she glanced down at her protruding belly—“an ‘oops.’”

  Rachel knew all about Brit’s surprise pregnancy. Her husband, Pete, was thrilled, in search of that ever-elusive son after three girls. Brit? Not so much.

  “I can’t believe Lila talked me into catering the thing. Geez, why did I agree to it?” Brit wiped the steam wand of the espresso machine with a vengeance. “I should have my head examined.”

  “She can be very persuasive.”

  “And then some,” Brit said with a snort.

  Lila. Forever the enigma. Once Rachel’s best friend. Mother of Luke’s son. And now married to Cade’s father. Which made her Rachel’s ex–stepmother-in-law and created a situation that was beyond weird or “sick,” as her son said. In Rachel’s estimation, Dylan wasn’t all that far off the mark. Six years after graduation Lila had eloped with Charles Ryder, a widower who was twenty-five years older than she. Somehow, the marriage had lasted, even as Rachel and Cade’s had foundered.

  She didn’t want to think about that.

  Ever.

  CHAPTER 3

  Cade threw out an arm, fingers scrabbling on the sheets as he searched for Rachel and came up empty. Half asleep, he opened a bleary eye just as the reality of his life surfaced. He was alone. In his bed. In his condo. “Crap.”

  How long would it be for it to really sink in that he was divorced, that his ex-wife had moved on, and that he had better get the hell over her? He’d screwed up and he was paying for it. Every damned day.

  “Son of a . . .” He rolled off the bed, a twenty-year-old double he’d shared with Rachel before they’d bought the newer queen sized. That one he’d left at the house with his wife when she’d kicked him out. This saggy one he’d scrounged from the garage.

  It was time to do something about that, too.

  A new mattress, a new life.

  Yeah, right.

  Stretching and hearing his spine pop, he walked through his condo and noted the open laptop in the living room, where he’d left on a light. His TV was still tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station, the volume barely audible. Scattered around his recliner were three days’ worth of newspapers, and on the table, several case files he’d been reading. Then his gaze landed on t
he half-full bottle of scotch and the empty glass sitting next to it.

  No wonder his head pounded.

  “Stupid,” he told himself as he picked up the bottle and smelled the heady scent of the liquor before recapping the bottle and hauling it into his small kitchen, where he jammed it into the cupboard over the refrigerator. He should pour it out. Take away the temptation, but he didn’t. Just as he hadn’t for the past couple of years. At first, after the breakup, he’d drunk to forget, or to rebel or to dull the senses. Something he’d never wanted to analyze too closely. Lately, though, it had become more than that. Not just a drink he savored in the evening after a long day’s work, but more like three or four or more. At every physical he only copped to having one or two a week, but he figured the docs saw through that.

  Who was he kidding?

  His jaw tightened and he told himself that he had a handle on his alcohol consumption, that he didn’t have a problem, that he wasn’t like his father-in-law . . . whoa, make that his ex–father-in-law, Ned Gaston, whose reputation for his love of the bottle precluded his forced retirement from the department. Ned? Rachel’s father? That guy had a problem. Along with a temper that was legendary.

  So don’t go down that path, Ryder. Be smart.

  He downed two ibuprofen with a glass of water, then spent the next half hour doing push-ups and pull-ups on a bar he’d screwed into the closet doorway before moving to the rowing machine. He pushed himself hard and was covered in sweat by the time he’d stepped off. Then a quick shower and shave. He dressed by rote and his hangover, if that’s what it was, had dissipated by the time he’d gathered his case files and laptop and headed out the door to the beat-up pickup he’d bought from his older brother just after the divorce. A ten-year-old Chevy Silverado crew cab wasn’t exactly what he’d thought he’d needed, but, being as the truck was paid for, maybe he’d been wrong.

  It wasn’t the first time.

  He grabbed a cup of coffee and a scone at a drive-through kiosk, then drove to the station, a small brick building in the older part of town, the city jail attached. Inside, he sat at his desk, the same space Rachel’s father, Ned, had occupied, back in the day. As he’d already drained his first cup, he headed to the break room, which was little more than an alcove off the hallway leading to the jail. Comprising two tables, a scattering of chairs, a coffee station, and refrigerator, the area was often empty. This morning, though, two officers were seated at the round table, the local paper spread out between them. Mendoza was reading the sports page, while Nowak was working on the daily jumble.

  “What the hell is that word?” Nowak muttered to himself, clicking his pen. “N-A-X-L—”

  Cade glanced down at the letters. “Larynx.”

  “What?”

  “Like your throat.”

  “I know that, but . . . oh, hell.” Nowak was a beefy, fiftyish deputy with red hair clipped in a buzz, a fleshy face, and small features set close together. He’d been with the department for as long as Cade could remember, a “lifer.” One of three or four locals who’d gone to high school and maybe some college but ended up here.

  Mendoza didn’t bother swallowing a smile and glanced up, dark eyes glinting. “Maybe he’s just smarter than you, Ed,” he said as Donna Jean Porter, the secretary for the department, swept in.

  “Be nice, boys,” she warned with a knowing smile. In her late forties and divorced, Donna was short, blond, and always fighting her weight with the latest fad diet. She’d been with the department longer than Cade and had gone through boyfriends as fast as she did diet plans. She set a container of what looked like cottage cheese into the refrigerator.

  “We’re always nice,” Mendoza said.

  “Yeah, right.” A phone rang in the front of the department, and she was out of the lunchroom, her heels clicking on the hallway as she made her way to the front desk.

  “And just for the record,” Nowak called after her, “Ryder’s not smarter than me. Just better at these goddamned things.” Nowak took a sip of his coffee and wrote the letters in the appropriate squares as Cade’s gaze landed on the front page. He heard Donna in the reception area, trying to calm down someone on the phone. “I’m sure he’ll turn up, but yes, we’ll be on the lookout for him. You’ve talked to the local shelter and vet, yes, yes, I know . . . what breed again . . . ?” But the conversation faded as he stared down at the newspaper and the headline leapt out at him:

  TWENTY-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY STILL HAUNTS TOWN

  and in smaller letters:

  WHO KILLED LUKE HOLLANDER?

  Cade froze. Stared at the headline, his gut tightening as he read the first paragraph:

  Twenty years ago on this date, Luke Hollander died from a gunshot wound at the abandoned Sea View cannery located a mile west of Edgewater. A group of teenagers had been playing what turned out to be a deadly game near midnight when tragedy occurred. One of the game’s organizers, Luke Hollander, was shot at the cannery and though taken to the local hospital, he was pronounced dead on arrival. His half sister, Rachel Gaston, was taken into custody and accused of the crime, though she was later acquitted. The victim’s stepfather, Detective Ned Gaston, was the first officer on the scene....

  “Oh, Jesus,” Cade whispered as he read the rest of the column, the first in a four-part series, in which several people were quoted. Two photographs accompanied the piece. The first was a head shot: Luke’s senior picture. He smiled at the camera, blue eyes sparkling, blond hair falling over his forehead. Not even twenty and already he’d had the chiseled, strong features of a man. The second photograph was less distinct, but Cade recognized it as the grainy shot of Ned Gaston helping his own daughter into the back of a patrol car on the night of the tragedy, when everyone, Rachel included, believed she’d shot her half brother. At that point Luke was still alive, being rushed to the local hospital, only to be pronounced DOA, despite the desperate measures taken by the EMTs in the ambulance.

  “What?” Nowak asked, bringing Cade back to the present.

  “Nothing.” A lie. But Nowak didn’t call him out.

  This wasn’t good.

  Dredging up the horror of the past would only cause more trouble.

  And Rachel would be devastated. She already had anxiety issues and, well, maybe even more than that. Fuck, he thought. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! The byline indicated that Mercedes Pope, one of Rachel’s former classmates, had written the article. In it both Nathan Moretti and Lila Ryder had been quoted, two more “friends.” Nathan had been Luke’s friend and fellow athlete while Lila, well, she had dated Luke, ended up having his kid. She’d also gone to the Sea View cannery with Rachel that night. Now, of course, in a bizarre twist of fate, Lila was his damned stepmother.

  This town was just too damned small.

  “Somethin’ wrong?” Mendoza asked, looking up from the baseball scores, but Cade didn’t bother answering, just strode out of the lunchroom and headed back to his desk. He hadn’t noted the significance of the date this morning, but he was sure as hell that Rachel had.

  He wondered if she had known about the article.

  Maybe.

  But probably not.

  And she wasn’t quoted in the piece.

  Mercedes Pope had been at the cannery that night as well. Now she owned part of the newspaper her grandfather had founded some fifty years earlier. And, it seemed, had decided to dredge up the ice-cold case now.

  “Great,” Cade said aloud. “Just . . . great.”

  Rachel had never gotten over the trauma of Luke’s death. “Damn it all to hell.”

  His phone buzzed as he made his way back to his desk. He glanced at the screen.

  Kayleigh’s number came into view.

  Shit, no.

  His jaw tightened and he clicked the message off before reading it.

  Not now.

  The day had already started off on the wrong foot.

  But the good news?

  It wasn’t yet eight in the morning.

  There was a damne
d good chance things would only get worse.

  * * *

  Rachel kicked off her shoes on the back porch, then stepped inside the kitchen and dropped the bakery sack on the counter. A fresh pot of coffee was already brewing, thanks to autoperk. She tapped on each kid’s door, calling through the panels, “Time to get up. C’mon, ‘rise and shine,’” using the same time-worn phrase her mother had a quarter of a century earlier to motivate Rachel and Luke from their beds. It worked about as well today as it had then. “Move it! We don’t want to be late.”

  A groan from Harper’s room.

  Nothing emanating from Dylan’s.

  No surprise there.

  Upstairs, she showered and changed, pushed her hair into a high ponytail and dabbed on lipstick and mascara before hesitating at the bathroom mirror and eyeing her reflection. She should bring up the missing drugs with the kids. Actually she had to, she thought, and opened the cabinet to retrieve the bottle before slipping it into her pocket. Then she trundled down to the first floor, where she discovered Harper, eyes at half-mast, standing at the kitchen counter.

  “Doughnut in the bag,” Rachel said, pointing to the white sack. “Juice in the fridge.”

  “Just coffee.”

  “You drink coffee?” Dumbfounded, Rachel eyed her daughter. “Since when?”

  “I dunno. A while.”

  This was news to Rachel.

  Harper yawned. “Three more days of it and then a cleanse.”

  “A cleanse? Like a diet?” Rachel skewered her daughter with a glare as she found two coffee cups in the cupboard. She eyed Harper’s slim frame and said, “You don’t need to diet,” as she poured from the glass carafe.

  “It’s not to lose weight, Mom.”

  Was there just the hint of a know-it-all sneer in her daughter’s voice?

  Great.

  “It’s healthy.” Harper reached across the counter and into the cupboard for the sugar bowl, found a teaspoon in the drawer, then shoveled three spoonfuls into her cup. In the refrigerator she found a carton of hazelnut creamer, then added a thick stream into her cup and searched the refrigerator again. “Don’t we have any syrup? Oh, wait, here it is.” She extracted a brown plastic bottle and squirted two thick blobs of chocolate into her concoction.